


only fools fall for you.

by katarama



Series: leave this blue neighborhood. [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Before the Draft, Closeted Character, Flashbacks, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Undecided Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-17 23:17:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10604328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: Off and on for three and a half weeks, Kent is on top of the world, and the idea that he can step in and make a statement and shift the entire dialogue about LGBTQ+ issues in hockey seems plausible.  He believes that he holds the power to change hockey and to keep Jack, all in the palm of his hand.And then, reality catches up, and the crash comes.





	

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  **If you're new to this series, start[HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10586022).**

**June 2009**

 

Kent gets this feeling sometimes.  This feeling where he’s on top of the world.  Where if he just wants something enough, then the world will shift around him so things happen how they should.  

When things are good, they’re very good.  He’s 18.  He’s done with school.  He has a boy with blue eyes and floppy hair who kisses him like breathing, who goes soft under Kent like he doesn’t know how to do anything else with the weight of Kent’s body pressing down on him.  Kent’s team just won the Memorial Cup, and his name is near the very, very top of the list for the NHL Entry Draft.  

By most accounts, it’s hard to get more perfect than that.

He’s been riding the high of their victory since the moment he lifted the cup into the air with his alternate captain.  In that moment, he had the thought that maybe, just that once, in the moment, he might be able to get away with the things he wanted to do.  He might be able to get away with leaning over and kissing Jack on the mouth in public, or burying his face in Jack’s neck and holding him as close as he could.  No one might think anything of it, in context.  It could be their own little shared secret in plain view, like the origin of the hickeys on Jack’s neck that the whole team swears up and down come from puck bunnies.

Kent doesn’t do it, though the impulse is so strong it burns under his skin.  Kent doesn’t kiss Jack like he wants to because Jack’s focus is elsewhere.  And Kent knows how Jack is about all of it, how Jack gets upset after the fact sometimes even with stuff that comes as easy as Kent sitting on his lap at team parties, or when they’re both stuck in the sin bin.  

But the thought stays with him, as days turn into weeks and the draft looms closer.  The thought that there may be some way for him and Jack to still do that.  To carry on in secret.  Jack has talked him to death about how there’s going to have to be an end date to the two of them.  He’s said that it would be improper, once they’re on different teams, to keep something going.  That it would affect their game.  That it would put their contracts at risk.  That it would leak out to the press, and that they’d be crucified for it, bullied at best and black balled at worst.

Kent thinks that Jack is more than a little bit melodramatic about it.  He knows that it’s something to take seriously.  He knows that he’s agreed with Jack, for a long time, that this can’t be something indefinite.  At least, objectively, he’s agreed, over the protest of the nauseated, betrayed feeling in his gut.  He’s agreed that they can’t keep doing things the same way, ducking around for locker room quickies with a hope and a prayer that some fucking newbie won’t walk in on them.  And he knows that distance is hard, especially for him; he’s felt it for the part of every summer when he’s gone back home to live with his mom instead of staying in Quebec with Jack.

These past few weeks, though, Kent has been on top of the world, and it’s hard to imagine it not working.  It’s hard for him to see any reason that he and Jack should have to stop doing this.  After all, he and Jack have this down to a science, by now, and it isn’t like NHL players aren’t allowed to have friends.  With their upcoming salaries, it isn’t like it’s going to be a huge deal to book a flight to Vegas to see Jack every once in a while.  It isn’t like anyone’s going to think twice about Jack and Kent going out for drinks after a game when they were infamously best friends in the major juniors.  And if they disappear from the bar together and head home to someone’s apartment instead of to the hotel, well.  Kent doubts that anyone will notice, let alone say anything.

And the last week or so, Kent has taken it even farther.  Because why should they even have to keep it a secret?  Kent spools out stories to Jack like they could be real, talking about press conferences versus social media posts versus interviews with online magazines, the two of them coming out on the tails of their victory.  Kent believes that he would do it.  Kent would do it in a heartbeat, announce to the world that he’s bi as shit and has been fucking a boy for the last year or so, and that if anyone wants to do anything about it, be his fucking guest.  There’s no way they aren’t going to go one and two on the draft, and any NHL team worth anything would want them.  Jack is Jack _Zimmermann_ , Bad Bob’s kid.  Any team who was so bigoted that they’d turn down the chance to have Jack is flat out business stupid.  

Kent tells Jack as much, in the quiet of Jack’s bedroom.  His voice is fierce and firm, and if his tone is a little bit frantic, well.  He has his reasons.  The closer he gets to the draft, the more he realizes that there are things to lose.  His unspoken relationship with Jack and his only chance to go into the NHL with no secrets.  His chance to change the hockey world forever, to take it by force and make the world adjust around him.  

“Kent,” Jack only pleads with him.  “Please don’t.  You know we can’t.”

In those moments, it makes Kent mad, makes his hands clench and his stomach burn.  That Jack doesn’t see how easy it would be.  How nice it would be to be able to unload that from both of their shoulders.  It’d be one less secret for Jack to keep buried inside him, one less weight to carry.  Even Kent knows, from the small bits and pieces Jack has said to him, that Jack has more than enough to deal with without it.  Most of Jack’s worries Kent thinks are a little bit ridiculous, though he softens his thoughts when he shares them out loud with Jack; Jack keeps talking like he won’t go high in the draft at all, like the whole world is analyzing him under the microscope of how he isn’t what his father was.  

It’s upsetting to Kent that Jack seems to think that him not being straight is just one thing on a laundry list of reasons teams won’t want him.  It’s hard to listen to Jack beg Kent not to say anything with such vehemence that Kent is wondering if he thinks Kent is on the verge of just shouting it out in public somewhere, “Jack Zimmermann is queer and has had my dick in his ass.”  Admittedly, it does sound like something Kent would do, especially after a few beers (or a sober round of truth or dare), but Jack should know better than to think that Kent would do this on his own.  If Kent were going to do it alone, he would’ve already.

That’s the whole point.  That would be the point of taking the risk.  It would be the security of knowing that when they’re in the NHL, they don’t have to lose each other.  Kent can take the fucking hits if it means not having to go back to acting like he and Jack are nothing to each other, or are only close friends.  Kent can make his bold statement and wait for the world to catch up to his pace if it means that, at the end of the day, he can call Jack and talk to him and call him Zimms and babe and all those names that are just for the two of them.  

Off and on for three and a half weeks, Kent is on top of the world, and the idea that he can step in and make a statement and shift the entire dialogue about LGBTQ+ issues in hockey seems plausible.  He believes that he holds the power to change hockey and to keep Jack, all in the palm of his hand.

And then, reality catches up, and the crash comes.

Kent can’t describe what changes.  He goes to bed three nights before the draft at 3:30 AM, binge researching the second draft city where he’ll probably be living soon, trying to figure out what the homophobia levels look like there.  He wakes up and checks his phone and sees that Jack hasn’t replied in two days.  He worries and he frets all morning, because Jack is usually really good about responding to texts.

It’s about noon when everything starts to crack.

Not talking to Jack, it starts to sink in that maybe Jack is doing this intentionally.  Maybe he’s distancing himself from Kent.  Maybe he’s trying to make this easier on both of them, or maybe he’s too embarrassed by Kent to want to admit to the world that he dated him.  Or didn’t date him.  It isn’t like Jack has ever said what they are.  And it seems naive to think that he wants to come out as Kent’s friend with benefits.  It seems naive to think that Jack has any reason to come out at all, because he doesn’t need Kent.  There’s no guarantee that he even wants Kent, not as more than a fun thing to help the major juniors pass by.

Things spiral pretty quickly to Kent checking his phone way too regularly, trying to keep his fingers from typing out… he doesn’t know what.  Some sort of inquisition?  Some sort of desperate plea not to cut Kent out of his life?  Some sort of rant about how nothing’s ever going to change, a rant that eventually fades away to the sort of quiet resignation that he’s just now realizing that Jack has been experiencing for the last few weeks.  Maybe some sort of check in with Jack, to see if he’s actually okay, would really be the most appropriate.

Kent ends up sending a lot of messages.  Too many messages, probably.  But Kent never asks if Jack is okay.  Kent knows he’s not okay.  Kent knows that in a few days, Jack’s going to be going somewhere that Kent isn’t.  Kent knows that things were never going to go any differently than the way they were supposed to, the way Jack and Kent agreed to back when they hooked up that first time.  Kent was never going to end up staying with Jack.  He was never going to end up back in Jack’s pocket again.  He was never going to keep the best parts of what he has now, Jack in his bed on a regular basis, or Sunday night dinners at the Zimmermann house, or the light in Jack’s eyes when he’s about to make a terrible joke, or the way Jack’s whole face flushes when Kent’s mouth goes anywhere near his asshole.  Not forever.

Kent knows that he’s a moron for ever believing that there was a happy ending in this.  He just wishes that he would’ve realized that before he let himself get in this deep.

Kent doesn’t know how not to love Jack Zimmermann, and he has a feeling that, after the draft, that’s going to become a huge problem.

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](http://polyamorousparson.tumblr.com).


End file.
